


I Don't Want To Live Forever

by Jinx72



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Death, Gen, Taako is going to live so much longer than the others and that makes me sad, Taako's relationship w/ Merle is the focus here, dying of old age, this is a whole lot of ANGST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-15 19:07:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18675685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jinx72/pseuds/Jinx72
Summary: When Magnus dies, Taako begins to realise just how much he's going to outlive everyone. Him and Merle watch the years tick by, their old friends slip away.When Merle begins to really get on in age, he takes it surprisingly well.He's by his bedside when he passes.





	I Don't Want To Live Forever

**Author's Note:**

> i binged all of taz balance over a few months and now it haunts me. this idea came to me and now i'm somehow sadder than i was left at the end of the balance arc. 
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> enjoy!!!
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> \---  
> I'm adding this warning onto all my fanworks due to a scare I had the other day. 
> 
> I have recently discovered one of my fanfics was posted on another site without my knowledge or consent. PLEASE DO NOT POST MY WORK ONTO OTHER SITES, FULL STOP. If I intended for my works to be on wattpad or fanfiction.net, I would have posted them there myself. Thank you, and enjoy the fic.

Magnus Burnsides died of old age. He lived to the ripe old human age of ninety eight. It was hard, so very hard, to watch him wither like that. Magnus Burnsides, fighter and rogue, The Bear, etcetera, etcetera. He had always been full of life, and passion, and love. He had died surrounded by family, with his wife’s wedding ring in hand, and a peaceful smile on his face.  
Taako had sat next to Merle at his bedside. He hadn’t held his hand or anything.  
He kind of wished he had.

And yet, the world ticked on. Merle and him lived longer than humans, longer than gnomes, than dragonborn and halforcs. They attended more funerals than they could count, for more people than they could bear to recall. But Taako hadn’t been alone in this, having Merle at his side the whole time, an unerring pillar of support as everything else changed ever so quickly around them.

But Merle Highchurch was not exactly a young dwarf when they first met him. And sure, a dwarf’s aging is like a trickle next to a river compared to human’s, but still, it was so, _so_ much faster than elves.  
Taako watched as the life went from his friend over the decades, until his joints were too stiff to move and his eyes were too milky to see. He spent his last years confined to a rocking chair, one that Magnus had made him _centuries_ ago now, cracking jokes that didn’t quite make sense, and dozing. Lots of dozing.

Taako had been visiting, staying the week, when Merle passed. He had died overnight, quietly, dozing off in his armchair.

Taako had only discovered this when he woke, sitting up on the couch Merle had offered him and seeing his husband, the Grim Reaper himself, standing over the dwarf’s old body with a sad smile.  
“Babe…?” Taako had mumbled. He was still fuddled with sleep. He hadn’t joined the dots yet.  
“It’s his time to go, Taako,” Kravitz said softly, scythe in hand.  
All of a sudden, Taako was awake, scrambling to his feet and bolting over to his friend, feeling for a pulse, for breath, _anything._  
“Merle Fucking Highchurch, you better not have died on me,” Taako snapped, but there was no strength to his growl. His voice cracked miserably. If Kravitz was here, there already was no hope.  
Kravitz put a gentle hand on his shoulder and Taako could not stand the weight.  
“He asks if you would plant his arm for him,” Kravitz said, nodding to the wooden prosthetic Merle had been gifted from Pan himself so many years ago. “Part of Pan’s blessing, apparently.”  
Taako stared at it for a hollow moment, before reaching over and detaching it before he lost the nerve.  
“Is he happy?”  
The words tore themselves out of his mouth before Taako could filter whether he wanted to know the answer or not.  
Kravitz’s eyes wandered to an empty space beside him, before his face softened. “He’s happy to be able to see again. And he’s sorry he’s ditching you,” he said, and it sounded like he was directly relaying Merle’s words. “He says he’ll say hi to Magnus for you.”  
Taako stared at that empty space for a moment, before he fell to his knees. “You better, little man,” he agreed, trying to roughly brush tears away. “You say hi to Magnus, and Lucretia and Davenport, and my man Ango. Carey and Killian and Johann and Avi and Pringles. Everyone you can, alright, fuckface?”  
Kravitz laughed a little. “He says, only if you apologise to everyone here for him, shithead,” he relayed. “His children, mostly. Tell them he tried to hang on for them, but Pan said it was time.”  
“You can’t do anything, Krav?” Taako asked, rising to his feet.  
Kravitz looked down. “I’ve broken so many rules for you three already, over the years,” he murmured. “I can’t, Taako, please understand. I can’t give you any more. This time, I even have direct orders from Pan to let him be. And anyway, do you think it’s kind to make him stay in a body like that?”  
He directed Taako’s gaze to Merle’s body. Despite the fact it was going unnervingly cold, Taako could almost convince himself that he was asleep. He was going to wake up at any moment. But he was right. The painfully swollen joints, his fading senses, his speech that was getting more and more garbled the longer he lived. It wouldn’t be fair at all. Taako was many things, but he wasn’t beginning to call himself _cruel._  
“I’ll make sure he’s buried on that hill overlooking the beach he likes,” he heard himself say. “I’ll plant his arm there too. It’s a nice view.”  
A moment of silence.  
“He’d like that.”  
“Merle?” Taako said suddenly, his voice loud in the quiet room. “He’s here, isn’t he?”  
Kravitz looked down to the empty space beside him again.  
“Yes,” he replied softly.  
“Thank you,” Taako whispered, staring directly at that empty space. “For everything, the laughs, the adventures, all those times you put me up for the night, no questions asked. I know I gave you so much shit but…” Taako looked away, to try and keep himself from crying. “Thanks.”  
He felt the ghost of a warm touch on his arm.  
“He says thanks as well,” Kravitz translated, and even he sounded subdued. “Don’t feel bad about it. He’s super old, it was to be expected. K-keep…”  
Kravitz had to swallow hard, and Taako’s head shot up at the realisation that Kravitz was fending off tears as well.  
“He says to keep them waiting,” Kravitz continued. “Take your time.”  
“You know it,” Taako replied hollowly, but he really didn’t feel like it.  
“If you end up in the Astral Plane any earlier than you should, he’s going to beat your ass,” Kravitz said, before he frowned. “And I am too,” he tacked on the end.  
Taako smiled. “Got it, crystal clear, over and out and all that,” he confirmed with a mock salute.

He watched Kravitz turn to the empty space and offer a hand. “It’s time to go,” he said softly.  
Taako bit his lip as an idea came to him. “Wait,” he begged. “Just a minute. Like, literally, it only lasts a minute.”  
Kravitz’s eyes sparked with realisation, and he nodded gently.  
Taako cast Blink.  
In a heartbeat, he was standing in the Ethereal plane, and Kravitz was still there, now looking grim and dead in his skull-like form, and…  
there was Merle. Standing before him as plain as day.  
He looked just like he did the day they first met, with both eyes a striking hazel, a full grey beard and his long hair tied back into a bun. The moment Taako appeared in this plane, tears that the dwarf must’ve been fighting escaped from under his thick spectacles.  
“Taako.”  
“I gotta see ya off properly, my man. Can’t see you off if I can’t _see_ you,” Taako blabbered, rushing over and throwing his arms around the dwarf in a tight hug. “I only have a minute, that’s how long Blink lasts.”  
“Yeah,” Merle mumbled, burying his face in Taako’s hair, “I know.”  
They just embraced like that, seconds ticking by in silence, before Taako pulled back.  
“I’m going to live for like, a thousand more years,” he whispered.  
Merle nodded sadly. “We’re gonna miss you,” he replied softly.  
“I’m afraid I’m going to forget you,” Taako blurted, his hands covering his mouth. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen Magnus and I _can’t remember his face,_ Merle. How am I going to remember you all in another four hundred years? A thousand? I’m fucked!”  
“Hey, hey,” Merle cooed softly, his hands on his shoulders. “I know this is probably looting, but there’s a locket around my neck. I-it’s got photos of everyone in it. I want you to have it. It might help with that.”  
Taako smiled, and hugged Merle again. “Thank you, Merle,” he gasped out.  
“Smell ya later, Taako,” Merle said softly, squeezing him tight, and Taako could feel the warmth that the cleric always seemed to carry with him.  
Then the spell ended.  
Taako’s knees hit the carpet as Kravitz and Merle disappeared.  
That warmth was gone.  
He was alone.

On that day, if you were anywhere near Earl Merle’s estate that morning, you probably would’ve been summoned by the bloodcurdling, heartbroken scream.  
You would’ve rushed in, like Mavis and Mookie Highchurch, now fully-grown dwarves in their own right, to see the Great Chef and Wizard Taako, you know, From TV, sobbing over the old dwarf’s body, and the gravity of what happened would’ve struck you like it did them.  
Because when someone leaves your life, those exits are not made equal. Some are beautiful and poetic and satisfying. Others are abrupt and unfair. But most are just unremarkable. Unintentional. Clumsy.  
And it truly was an unremarkable death for such a remarkable being.

If, later that week, you were anywhere near Bottlenose Bay, you probably would’ve gone to the funeral. A busy affair, filled with generations of people Merle had helped, kids Merle had taught, people who remembered him and his legacy, who had known him and loved him.  
You would have seen his two children, and you would’ve seen two two elves, identical, obviously twins (and one was Taako, from TV!) and a human man in blue jeans. They all gave speeches about him. About knowing him, living with him, loving him.  
You would’ve seen Taako speak last, fighting through tears, before overseeing the burial of his body in a driftwood coffin. Sand was thrown in the grave, as homage for the dwarf’s love of the beach, before finally, the scrape of shovels heralded the burying. You would see Taako himself take up a shovel, constantly stopping to wipe dry his eyes, not stopping until the land was flat, before picking up what you would _swear_ was a wooden arm, and planting it upright in the dirt.  
You would’ve seen a flash of golden light, and in that moment of gold and not, you would’ve seen the arm morph into a tree, and you would’ve seen Pan himself standing over the grieving elf, and offer a blessing on the grave.

If you go to Bottlenose Bay now, you would see that tree, fully grown, standing proud and lofty, casting a welcome shadow over the beach. And you will see an elf sitting in its branches from time to time, staring down at an open locket he has in hand, just… talking. Talking to the tree, you suppose.  
People forgot this was a grave, but in no way was Merle himself ever forgotten, ever lost to the strands of time.

And thousands of years later, when that same elf is finally _old,_ you might see him come to the tree in his final days, that same locket still in hand. Sometimes, people come with him. That elf who looks just like him but somehow hasn’t aged. The human man with blue jeans who has remained untouched for all this time. A dark, tall, handsome man wearing a matching ring who keep him company and quietly beg him to stay. They offer solutions, work arounds, anything to keep the elf on this plane of existence and with them, but it’s easy to see he is not convinced.  
When the elf finally passes on, he is sitting on a beautifully carved antique wooden rocking chair he moved to the foot of the tree, clutching a locket in one hand and a wonderfully carved antique wooden duck in the other. You might think it was foolish for him to be out overnight like that when his stiff body is found there the next day, but the peaceful blanket of crunchy auburn autumn leaves and the small smile on his face would tell you another story.

You might see the handsome man arrive through a rift, in tears, but seemingly filled with peaceful understanding, before his handsome face transforms into a skull and, scythe in hand, you realise you are witnessing the Grim Reaper take this elf to the afterlife.  
A quiet, unintentional, clumsy and completely unremarkable death.  
But you might catch a glance of the elf’s spirit before it is taken from this plane forever.  
And you might even dare to say that  
he looks _happy._


End file.
